don't keep asking me: i might disintegrate
by Sorde
Summary: A little blurb a few months after Prague. Sarah's POV. Rated for relatively mild language.


_Don't Keep Asking Me; I Might Disintegrate_

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**Author's Note: **This is... angsty. XD Something I came up with while rewatching season three. There's really no comedy in this one, but it's Sarah-centric, so that was fun to write. If you see something (and/or just think it's) OOC, please point it out; you have no idea how much it'd help. So, to recap: angst. Sarah. Post-Prague, pre-Chuck's-return. Also (because it needs to be said six thousand times), Sarah. Enjoy!

Oh, and I don't own Chuck. Title/lyrics below come from the song _Papercut _by Jordin Sparks.

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_'I wish I was the tin man so I wouldn't have a heart to break.'_

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On the fifth day of the fourth month of misery, she orders a box of Heineken, doesn't so much as thank the man who brings it up to her, and takes a sip.

She's always been a Samuel Adams fan, herself, but Heineken sounds foreign and she's simultaneously endeared and furious (as always) in all regards of 'foreign', which is why she downs it and grabs another three from the back. By the time those are finished, her head is buzzing and her eyesight is just slightly out of focus.

She's supposed to be on a job. She's supposed to be with her target in his too-extravagant house, lounging by the pool and swinging her hair every which way as a means to get his attention. She's supposed to be, but instead, she's sitting in a hotel room a few miles away from the house, a pack of beer in hand and an entire hotel staff who probably think she's the biggest bitch on the face of the planet under her feet.

She is, she decides.

(Mostly because she refuses to acknowledge that she's heartbroken, and that she is not a laying-in-bed-eating-ice-cream heartbroken. In fact, she appears to be cause-as-many-people-as-much-pain-as-pos

sible heartbroken.)

But, really, she wouldn't be in this situation right now if Casey hadn't given her a call and said his name - or, rather, grunted 'Bartowski' in his best depracating-but-proud tone of voice, number eleven on the Casey grunt scale - while explaining some mission or another for her to tend to.

And if she really wants to get technical, there's always the notion that she wouldn't be in this situation right now if he'd just gotten on the damn train.

She takes out a fifth - or sixth? No, definitely seventh - beer and downs it, moving slowly and unevenly from the table in the corner of the room to her bed. The comforter is yellow. No flowers. She takes it off and stuffs it into the bathroom anyway, before returning to the bed and throwing herself on it.

She doesn't get drunk often. She wasn't invited to parties in high school, and was recuited into the CIA just after her eighteenth birthday. Agents got drunk and made mistakes. She didn't drink, and became the best agent the organisation had. Logic prevailed.

The first time was after Bryce's supposed betrayal and subsequent death. Half in love with him, half bored out of her mind with his predictable charms and personality, she drank away a good partner, a decent guy and her best friend. And then she threw the eight bottles against the wall to commemorate his total lack of a moral compass.

The second time happened after the bitch of an agent came in and determined that Sarah had established un-handler-like feelings towards Chuck. She'd become less of an agent that day. More of a heartbroken real person, less of an agent. Two extremes. She drank her sorrows away and came to work the next day, metaphorically shoved the bitch on her ass and literally saved Chuck's life.

The other three times has been once a month, at even intervals, since Chuck's rejection and subsequent departure. This one'll bring her up to six, she thinks, grasping at a fourth and taking a sip.

When she reaches this point, she begins to imagine an alternate reality. Most of the time, it's this image of her life - their life - if he'd gotten on the train in Prague.

This time, though, she's picturing what would have happened if they'd gone to the same high school. He would have liked her, she likes to think. He would have seen past the awkward haircut and the uncomfortable braces and the all around shifty, untrusting girl. They would have been best friends.

Of course, she'd have had to put up with Morgan, too, but she doesn't (_didn't_) really mind the little bearded man (except when he was stealing Chuck's condoms. Then, the knives hidden around various parts of her body were _very _tempting), and it would have been worth it, just having a friend. Having Chuck as a friend.

And she wouldn't have told him about her dad. Not at first, but he's - would have been, even then - Chuck Bartowski and she'd have blurted it out eventually. And then, once they crossed the awkward just-friends line, she'd have fallen in love with him. Actually, she'd have been in love with him the whole time, since his first sweet act and awkwardly-spoken line, but Chuck would have fallen in love with _her _(or would have appeared to be) and he would have broken through her walls.

On her eighteenth birthday, he would have asked her to come to Stanford with him. And they'd have gotten a dorm together, so there would have been no fraternity, no Bryce Larkin. When her dad got arrested, he would have been around as a staple, a reason to turn down Director Graham's offer. On her twenty-first birthday, he would have proposed.

All of a sudden, of all the reasons she had to be mad at her dad, the fact that he'd never moved her to Encino, of all the places in the world, infuriates her.

She puts her beer down on the nighttable, curls under the sheets of her bed, and doesn't cry. Very adamantly refuses to cry, in fact, even going so far as to throw a knife at the opposing wall to get some adrenaline pumping. Her vision is blurred, though, so the knife hits a corner of the TV and loses its angle, flopping against the wall feebly instead. It still makes a dent.

She still doesn't cry. She didn't cry then, either, not in Prague. Hell, she hadn't cried - real, honest-to-God tears - since she was seventeen years old. Besides the time when Chuck was about to be taken away by a CIA agent. Or the time she had to tell him she was choosing Bryce. Those remained the exceptions.

She doesn't cry.

Then again, she doesn't get drunk, either.


End file.
